Dale Carnegie · 358 pages
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“When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness.”
“Our thoughts make us what we are.”
“No matter what happens, always be yourself.”
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
“...the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today's work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.”
“Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”
“Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little".”
“Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.”
“Let's never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt
ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let's do as General Eisenhower does: let's never
waste a minute thinking about people we don't like.”
“You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”
“A good deed, "said the prophet Mohammed, "is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another."
Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer?
Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the very
thing that produces worry and fear and melancholia.”
“That is the way Emerson said it. But here is the way a poet -the late Douglas Mallochsaid
it:
If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill.
Be a scrub in the valley-but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
Be a bush, if you can't be a tree.
If you can't be a bush, be a bit of the grass.
If you can't be a muskie, then just be a bass-
But the liveliest bass in the lake!
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
There's something for all of us here.
There's big work to do and there's lesser to do
And the task we must do is the near.
If you can't be a highway, then just be a trail,
If you can't be the sun, be a star;
It isn't by the size that you win or you fail-
Be the best of whatever you are!”
“if you want to keep happiness , you have to share it !”
“When I asked him -Mr.Henry Ford- if he ever worried, he replied: "No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end.
So what is there to worry about?”
“أكثر الأشياء التي تتسبب في تهاوي الأقوياء هي إضافة حمل الأمس إلى حمل الغد وحملهما معا”
“Let's find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. ...When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book "The Origin Of Species" he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.”
“When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to God-"There are no atheists in foxholes." But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons.
When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: "Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective." At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open.
Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I'll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?”
“If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade
That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds
that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: "I'm beaten. It is fate. I haven't
got a chance." Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of selfpity.
But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: "What lesson can I learn from
this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a
lemonade?”
“when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.”
“The words "Think and Thank" are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of
England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: "Think and Thank". Think
of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.”
“Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass...if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass...slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own...structure.”
“القلق هو الدوران في حلقة مفرغة في حالة خروج عن العقل ”
“Thomas Edison said in all
seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour of
thinking"-if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that
bolster up what we already think-and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that
justify our acts-the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify
our preconceived prejudices!
As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires
seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage."
Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems?
Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if
we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of
people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two
plus two equals five-or maybe five hundred!”
“Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.”
“Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.”
“Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.”
“When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: "Try to
bear lightly what needs must be." Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and
resignation that touched the hem of divinity.”
“One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*):
"During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”
“فكر في السعادة واصطنعها ، تجد السعادة ملك يديك”
“We can't do this without you," I managed at last. "Everyone talks about my powers, but you're the badass here.”
“I've never had apple pie," I blurted out.
…
"You've never had apple pie?"
"No."
His brows rose. "Why?"
"I don't know. Just never tried it."
"That's so…so un-American," he said, and I rolled my eyes. "Are you a terrorist?”
“There were a lot of things in life to be afraid of, but strangeness ought not be among them.”
“When things reach the extreme, they alternate to the opposite.”
“Within this hollow bed of the stream the whole range of the quarry was out of sight, except for where the just visible peak of an escarpment of spoil shelved up to the horizon's mountainous coagulations of floating cottonwool, a density of white cloud perforated here and there by slowly opening and closing loopholes of the palest blue light.”
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